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  Cisrym Ta? This was the name that Sena had always used for Caliph’s uncle’s book—the book that she had discovered and brought into the north—the book she had studied day and night and rarely let out of her sight.

  If these accounts revolved around the Cisrym Ta, Caliph had a much better understanding of why Sena would be reading them. He turned the page and was once again confronted by the colophon of the falling man.

  Excerpt: pages 49–51

  The Fallen Sheleph of Jorgill Deep

  Precipice Books © 1546 S.K. by Arkhyn Hiel

  The upper arcades of Jorgill Deep are cleared. The floors are swept in both directions, inviting a menagerie of guests to dance atop the battlements. As the music begins, Arrian watches Corwin flirt ridiculously. He has become a sailor this last year, grown tan and arrogant. He no longer carries her colors.

  Tonight, he looks fine, still damp from ocean spray and graceful from ever balancing on ship decks. Arrian banishes the annoying thought and goes to the high table where sweet-fig pies have been laid before the merrymakers. She samples the desserts and licks her fingers when she hears him stop directly behind her.

  His voice and the clean smell of the ocean carry over her shoulder.

  Arrian turns and smiles. “I thought you came to see her instead of me.” She gestures with her eyes across the battlement.

  Corwin laughs a half-embarrassed laugh. He is only seventeen. “I doubt you know how to be jealous.”

  Arrian’s eyes flicker. “You don’t know me well anymore.”

  “Maybe not. But I sense your influence at this party. You’ve had the decorations hung exactly to your taste, probably fretting over them until early this morning.”

  She nudges him with her elbow, enjoying his nearness. Wreaths holding candles bear indigo ribbons and the flames illuminate white flowers overhead. The pergola above the arcade is burgeoning with blooms. “I brought you a gift from the mainland,” Corwin says. “Since you’ve never been away from Soth, I thought a little something foreign might be good.”

  “I love it here,” Arrian says defensively. “We have perfect seasons all year round.”

  Corwin replies with slow enticing words. “On the mainland they have snow.”

  “Snow?”

  Corwin grins. He reaches up and shakes the pergola, generating a storm of petals. “It’s white and cold and flutters from the sky—like rain but more slowly.” Arrian watches his lips move.

  “I belong here, Cor. You’re the traveler, not me. Besides, father says I should marry.”

  Corwin laughs. “You!—who’ve never had a suitor or anyone you loved, what would you do with marriage?”

  Arrian bites her lip softly. Her father is calling her from behind the high table. “I’ll be right back.”

  Corwin watches her go. The ghost of an old ache passes ever so faintly through his face.

  The party is for celebrating both Arrian’s birth and the anniversary of Jorgill Deep’s desecration. All the guests know that Arrian’s father has something special planned and servants are beginning to usher the party downstairs toward the courtyard.

  In a chamber off the arcade where the music is only a murmur, Arrian meets her father. It is strange to gaze on what is no longer me. As usual, the Ublisi stands at his side. Maelstroms of stars turn in each of her unsettling eyes. Arrian has never seen her eat or sleep. She has heard that Ublisi have no need of mundane necessities.

  Her father has told Arrian that tonight will be the culmination of higher things. Deeper studies. The Ublisi has worked out some holomorphic secret of unlocking, which will redeem Soth, an equation that will bring back the radiance of Ahvelle.

  At Jorgill Deep, there is a knot of stone, a weird whorl of minerals: cream-colored, spiraled into blackish and brownish granite—all of which swirl up into something like a protruding navel on the ground. It is the remnant of where one of the chambers7 first landed. A backward crater that defies standard physics. It is graven with glyphs not even the Ublisi remembers how to read and it rests in an unused alcove in an overgrown section of the courtyards of Jorgill Deep.

  “Arrian,” her father says. “We will be going down to the courtyard. My gift to you tonight,” his voice—my voice—softens, “will lift us to a better place.” He has green irises that I remember from the mirror, blunted with age, and he rests his hand gently on his daughter’s shoulder. She is the only creature that he still dares to love.

  The Ublisi says nothing but, with her cosmic white eyes, stares all the way through Arrian’s face.

  A chill goes through the birthday celebrant as the Ublisi turns slowly.

  “Come.” Arrian’s father puts her hand on his arm and leads her to the courtyard where the guests have already gathered under a pavilion of midsummer blooms. Glasta8 flutter through the garden and fan the smell of nectar.

  The Ublisi’s tall form seems to float across the lawn to where the stone knot has been extricated from an overgrowth of black pimplota. The Ublisi holds the bright red book in her hands. Its corners are shod in sparkling metal where proud Nekrytian serpents tense in intricate designs.

  Arrian knows about this book. It is occasionally still called the Gymre Ta, the Banishing Book: because of its role in locking D’loig in a prison in the stars. Its creation supposedly took a thousand years. But these days, it is simply called the Cisrym Ta, the Red Book—not only for the color of its cover, but for its fearsome results in the ongoing Yilthid War.

  The Ublisi stretches her arms beneath the moons and all the guests grow quiet.

  Only the glasta still flutter.

  Arrian stands near her father, his large hand clasped over hers. She can feel his anxiety. He has helped with the study and the preparation for this night, being a great mathematician. He waits now, breathing hard, for the golden lights that will soon fill the courtyard.

  The Ublisi begins to speak in the Unknown Tongue. Her numbers fill the air, bloodless and clean. Her voice sounds like a chyrming creature far away on the mountain of Soth. For an instant, molten glassy shapes distort the courtyard air. A sudden plunge in temperature reveals every exhalation. Inaudible frosty notes pluck a staccato stillness in the yard.

  The formula does not last long, but the moment of silence that follows feels eternal. One guest looks to the next, anxiety smoking between their lips. Arrian’s eyes meet Corwin’s and she sees a ghost of apprehension, a sailor’s instinct, perhaps. His body shifts in that infinite moment of doubt as he begins his first step toward her.

  The old obsidian-crusted mountain seems to shiver with the sudden chill. Then the world shakes itself like a wet dog. Stars become slits of light that streak two directions at once. The great horned mountain of Soth cracks open like a jungle flame. Rocks three times the size of Jorgill Deep tumble down into the fissure where the fortress stands.

  Arrian’s eyes sweep the yard in desperation. Amid the roar, she sees her father unscrew a metal capsule. He tips it into his mouth.

  Then the clouds of ash sweep in. The Ublisi stands in a halo of soot and rose-colored fire. Shards of granite and molten flowers of glowing rock rain down in every direction. The heavy hail stones the guests to death then prudently piles them under rocky graves.

  Arrian is knocked into an alcove where great falling boulders have already formed a cave of sorts. Someone has pushed her. She turns to see Corwin’s eyes. They are large and wet and desperate to help. A great jagged stone comes down. He disappears into ashy blackness. All of them are crushed like sweet-figs in a pie, buried in the courtyard in a great round of clay.

  Arrian’s eyes soak up the blood and broken bones, the fallen rock and glowing embers. Beyond the horror of their death, she sees the most terrifying thing of all. The Ublisi formula is still unwinding. The knot of stone has come undone, the whorl of colored rock, where one of the chambers left its mark, has opened, stretched itself into a hideous hole, as if the world is giving birth. Then, in grotesqueness too ripe to describe, abortive things haul themselve
s out. Great, translucent, protean limbs, eely monstrosities wrangle from the void and ooze and lurch and burble. The sweet stink of their decay fills the air. The gardens and the glowing moths wilt beneath rocks and huge putrid carcasses that cannot walk, but hump and slither across the liquefied land.

  My daughter must have used up every lamp and candle. And when the final wick burnt low, she must have screamed and clenched her teeth as she entered a darkness that would last twenty thousand years.

  She is a Gringling. An Eater of Time. Her blessing and her curse: to outlast the darkness.

  All of us were burnt and crushed but her—minor inconveniences you might say. What killed us was despair. We despaired in the face of those Abominations and gave up our immortality willingly on that hideous fiery night. We had no means of escape and did not wish to suffer the endless blackness of a living tomb. But she, my daughter, in that miraculous niche of canted stone, she alone refused to go. She held onto her Gringling skin and in so doing condemned herself to the bottom of the Loor as Soth sank beneath the waves.

  She went mad, of course, cursed with immortality that the rest of us had cast off, while she waited in the dark.

  On the night it rained fire, I did not expect her to stay; so I left on the sweet toxins of a final draft of shuwt tincture and found my way permanently into another form—one lacking the perfection of my Gringling corpse. But one day I will go back. I will find my little girl. I will pull her from the darkness and return to the shining lands of Ahvelle.

  For all its wild fantasy, Caliph found the account compelling. He blinked and rubbed crust from his eyes. Light was coming through the room’s single window and his duties as ruler of the duchy swung back on him like a punching bag.

  Nuj Ig’nos and the other diplomats were scheduled to leave today. Sena would be returning—late. And he had a ceremony to attend in conjunction with the holiday.

  What time is it? He checked. That can’t be right.

  He pushed himself out of the chair and walked briskly to the door. Sorting through his disheveled hair, he poked his head into the hall and asked the sentry stationed in the corridor for the time.

  “A quarter of seven, your majesty.” Already nearly noon!

  7Ambiguous capitalization. Does he know what these are?—Sena.

  8A species of luminous moth extinct c. 11062 (O.T.R.).

  CHAPTER

  6

  Caliph massaged his fingertips deep into his brow and grunted.

  “Should I tell the seneschal you’re awake?” asked the man.

  “No,” said Caliph. “No, no.” He struck out down the hall, headed for his bedroom.

  The day swelled around him, burgeoning with details and unexpected events. It was bathe, dress, lunch, bid his so-called guests good-bye and burn wooden masks in a leafy bonfire by half past ten. After that, the Blue General briefed him before he took loring tea with the burgomasters at twelve. Twenty minutes later he met the papers and answered questions regarding diplomacy with the south. He left out the parts about Pandragor wanting immediate unconditional access to twenty different sites and mostly stuck to his lines, “We’ve both agreed to more talks and I think Ambassador Ig’nos shares my optimism … we’re looking forward to a positive dialogue in Sandren.”

  By fourteen o’clock, just before dinner, Caliph had managed to clear his schedule and wriggle out of obligations at a maskless party in upper Murkbell where two-hundred well-heeled guests planned to close out the Funereal of the Leaves in style.

  For Caliph, the cycle of days being High King, month-in month-out, resonated as a kind of unrelenting frequency. An insufferable pattern of noise and sound that he felt abrading him, disintegrating him slowly, both physically and mentally. To rule a country, he had established that you needed one thing more than any other: to want it.

  But what Caliph wanted was tranquility. He wanted to polish his own shoes, get black marks on his fingers. He wanted Sena to come home, stop her endless research and take breakfast with him as the sun rose out of the west. He wanted time—with her. He wanted a family, fruit trees and idle chatter around the kitchen table.

  Sena had offered that once. Did she still want it? A year ago they had been so close. Right after the war had ended, their goals had been braided into one line, reeling them forward.

  But that had changed. She had stopped leaving the library. At one point the servants claimed that she had remained on her stool for an entire week while Caliph had been away handling affairs in Morturm. One hundred eighty hours in an ice-cold room without food or water, perched on a stool without a back? Was it even possible? The servants said they often found her in the dark with the lamps gone out. They said she didn’t move, but stared at the books, as if she was reading them.

  Caliph’s thoughts lifted as a message arrived that Sena’s airship was coming in from the west, over Octul Box. He strode quickly through the statued opulence of a hallway overlooking the east courtyard, toward the castle’s zeppelin deck.

  When he arrived, the evening was gray and dripping, not quite cold enough to sting. Caliph’s stomach felt loose, like it was lying on the blocks beneath him. He insisted on standing alone. The small army of servants in charge of the arrival had organized themselves half a dozen yards away.

  Caliph kept waiting and watching … and waiting as the clouds churned.

  Finally, the Odalisque materialized like something conjured out of magic smoke. It slid into position above the zeppelin deck and immediately, a terrifying chill coursed through him.

  Sena had been gone nearly a year. It had been months since he had heard from her and, for him, the hiatus had metastasized into irrational unfamiliarity. He couldn’t wait to put his arms around her. Feel her. Smell her. Hear her voice.

  The craft’s wicked mulberry skin might have shown traces of purple under direct sunlight but currently it looked black, dangling from a claw of cloud. The Odalisque’s silver filigreed fins and spines marked her as an exclusive pleasure ship and though they tantalized the air with their femininity, they were also vaguely threatening.

  Caliph shifted from one foot to the other. He watched the lights flash, signaling that the ship had successfully docked. People began to move.

  The airship’s cargo doors opened and casket-shaped boxes began sliding out, pulled by rope handles, maneuvered by giant men. A small, fierce woman, clearly in charge, barked at the unloaders. The men adjusted their grips, used tarps to shield the containers from the rain and lugged the heavy loads toward the castle without complaint.

  Caliph took a flight of cement steps up to the parapet that would conduct Sena from the Odalisque to the castle’s warm interior. There were already servants moving back and forth along the narrow pathway hedged with crenels. He made his way toward the airship and spotted the captain. A big man with blond thickets on his forearms stepped out and addressed him with a quizzical smile. “Your majesty? Did she forget something?”

  “What?”

  The captain kept grinning. “Did she leave something behind? I’ll help you look.” He turned toward the ship.

  Caliph stopped him. “She’s already left? She’s already gone inside?”

  The captain turned back around, lips puckered, eyes wide. “Well … yes.”

  “And she came this way?” Caliph hooked a thumb toward the narrow parapet.

  Now the captain showed traces of concern. “Yes, she did. Is something wrong?”

  Caliph looked back through the rain in the direction he had come, feeling dizzy. It was impossible. He couldn’t have missed her. He didn’t know whether to board the Odalisque and search for her or return to the castle. Finally he forced a grin and waved his hand dismissively. “No. Nothing’s wrong. I must have gotten here late.”

  The captain saluted as Caliph turned and ducked back over the busy walkway, rain pounding him. By the time he entered the castle, he was soaking.

  A short, thick maid with breasts like gun stones nearly walked into him before declaring that he was
drenched. She insisted on getting a towel.

  “Where is Sena?” Caliph followed her to a nearby linen closet.

  The woman didn’t know. People milled near the doors; some glanced at him curiously.

  “Did you see her come in?”

  “Yes, I did. But I don’t know where’s she’s gone. Let’s get you dried off.”

  Caliph took the towel but left her immediately. He headed for the library, reached it in under a minute and found it locked. He grabbled through his keys, dropped them twice. When he finally unlocked the door, the space beyond was dark and empty.

  He headed for the kitchen, feeling strangely panicked. Sena wasn’t there. By the time he reached his bedroom—their bedroom—he was huffing. Two servants looked up at him, eyes turned saucer. They were folding down the sheets.

  “Have you seen Sena?”

  They shook their heads. Am I going crazy? He checked his choler. Was she doing this intentionally? Just then, a young butler Caliph knew appeared at the bedroom door and spoke with an irritatingly cheerful tone. “Pardon me, your majesty. The door was open. I hope…”

  Caliph’s frustration slipped out. “It’s fine, Gilver. What is it?”

  The butler continued smiling. “Her ladyship would like to meet you in the east parlor in half an hour. Can I tell her yes?”

  Caliph felt stunned. What could be more important than seeing him after so many months? Where was she? What was she doing?

  “No. Tell her I’ll meet her now.”

  Gilver’s smile vanished and his cheeks went pink as if Caliph’s displeasure had seared him. The butler turned, trying to maintain decorum. He gave up. His stride broke into a stiff-legged run.

  * * *

  SENA disregarded the summons, which put Caliph at the table for forty minutes working his way through spinach leaves and creepberries and almond-crusted tenderloin—alone. When he was done, he stalked back to the great east parlor where a salver of ice cream and wine waited.